Bible Strands
Isaiah 46:6
They pour out their bags of gold and weigh out silver on scales; they hire a goldsmith to fashion it into a god, so they can bow down and worship.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Isaiah addresses Israel, contrasting Yahweh’s unmatched nature with the futility of manufactured deities. The prophet confronts a people tempted to equate God with human-made objects during a period of national uncertainty.
The words — הַזָּלִים (ha.zalim) denotes those who pour out metal offerings, while צוֹרֵף (tzo.ref) identifies the hired goldsmith who shapes the material. These terms highlight the deliberate, labor-intensive process of crafting an idol from weighed precious metals.
The thread — The same critique of metal idols appears in Isaiah 40:19 and Jeremiah 10:14, where craftsmen are shown fabricating deities from gold and silver. Paul later echoes this argument in Acts 17:29, warning against thinking the Divine Being resembles crafted images.
Why it lands — The text records the physical labor of idol-making before noting the resulting worship of an inanimate object. It demands a reader recognize the absurdity of investing wealth and skill into a manufactured object that cannot move or respond.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
They lavish gold out of the bag, and weigh silver in the balance, and hire a goldsmith; and he maketh it a god: they fall down, yea, they worship.
Cross-references
- Acts 17:29 Therefore, being offspring of God, we should not think that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by man’s skill and imagination.
- Isaiah 40:19 To an idol that a craftsman casts and a metalworker overlays with gold and fits with silver chains?
- Jeremiah 10:14 Every man is senseless and devoid of knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols. For his molten images are a fraud, and there is no breath in them.
- Exodus 32:2 So Aaron told them, “Take off the gold earrings that are on your wives and sons and daughters, and bring them to me.”
- Judges 17:3 And when he had returned the eleven hundred shekels of silver to his mother, she said, “I wholly dedicate the silver to the LORD for my son’s benefit, to make a graven image and a molten idol. Therefore I will now return it to you.”
- 1 Kings 12:28 After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves and said to the people, “Going up to Jerusalem is too much for you. Here, O Israel, are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”
- Isaiah 2:8 Their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made.
- Isaiah 44:12 The blacksmith takes a tool and labors over the coals; he fashions an idol with hammers and forges it with his strong arms. Yet he grows hungry and loses his strength; he fails to drink water and grows faint.
- Jeremiah 10:3 For the customs of the peoples are worthless; they cut down a tree from the forest; it is shaped with a chisel by the hands of a craftsman.
- Jeremiah 10:9 Hammered silver is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz—the work of a craftsman from the hands of a goldsmith. Their clothes are blue and purple, all fashioned by skilled workers.